The most egregious attack on Cardinal Timothy Dolan came by way of a letter to the New York archbishop lecturing him on putting “access to power before principles.”

The letter campaign was funded by the number-one enemy of the Catholic Church: George Soros. The atheist billionaire funds John Gehring’s Faith in Public Life, and the letter to Dolan was written on the organization’s letterhead. Gehring was the first to sign it.

In 2012, Bill Donohue outed Gehring when he sought to manipulate the media against the bishops. In a document that was leaked to Donohue, Gehring sent a memo to reporters on June 7 instructing them how to frame their questions to the bishops concerning their “Fortnight for Freedom” initiative, a religious-liberty series of events. For example, he recommended they ask, “Are you willing to sacrifice Catholic charities, colleges and hospitals if you don’t get your way on the contraceptive mandate?” Once Donohue unmasked Gehring, the bishops ripped him in a long statement.

Gehring previously worked for Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good (perversely, he also worked for the bishops’ conference). It was a dummy Catholic front group, funded by Soros, that was created by John Podesta. Wikileaks disclosed that Podesta launched this group so they could infiltrate the Church and ultimately undermine it. This was part of the “Catholic Spring” revolution sought by the enemies of the Catholic Church.

Sister Simone Campbell was next to sign the letter. She showed how principled she was when she spoke at the 2012 Democratic National Convention supporting President Obama’s Health and Human Services mandate: it required Catholic non-profits to pay for abortion-inducing drugs in their healthcare plans. Campbell is also on record saying abortion should not be illegal—she would never say this about racial discrimination—and more recently she has thrown her support behind the Equality Act, the most anti-religious liberty piece of legislation ever written.

Sister Pat McDermott, President of the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, is the third name listed on the letter. She proudly defended Sister Margaret Farley when the Vatican concluded that her book on sexuality contradicted the Church’s teachings; the nuns are big fans of gay marriage.

Another signatory, Father Bryan Massingale, is so wedded to the gay rights movement that he gave a talk in 2017 on this subject before New Ways Ministry. It is a rogue Catholic entity that has been condemned by senior bishops in the United States, as well as the Vatican, for its promotion of homosexuality. He teaches at Fordham, a Jesuit school where the chairman of the department of theology claims to be married to his boyfriend.

Sam Sawyer, a Jesuit who works at America, the Jesuit magazine was in anguish. Dolan’s comments have caused “actual pain,” “fear,” and “suffering.” Was he really suffering? Or was he playing us?

Sawyer was unhappy that Dolan and other bishops on the call “did not challenge the president or voice reservations about his policies.” He branded this a “pastoral failure,” and was particularly piqued at Dolan for the manner in which he made his remarks (they were too cheery).

Here is what America said in 2009 when some Catholics, including bishops, reacted negatively to the news that President Obama was invited to speak at the University of Notre Dame. “If the president is forced to withdraw, will that increase cooperation between the Catholic Church and the Administration, or will it create mounting tensions and deepening hostility?” Sounds like they wanted our side to play ball. So why the double standard?

“The bishops and the president serve the same citizens of the same country. It is in the interests of both the church and the nation if both work together in civility, honesty and friendship for the common good, even where there are grave divisions, as there are on abortion.” Why doesn’t this principled stand apply to Dolan?

The editorial says that “it does not improve the likelihood of making progress on this and other issues of common concern if we adopt the clenched fist approach.” That is exactly what all of these critics did—they adopted a “clenched fist approach” to President Trump, hammering Dolan for not punching back.

When Pope Francis came to the U.S. in 2015, he made an impassioned speech to some 300 U.S. bishops. He implored them to “face [the] challenging issues of our time,” hastening to add that they refrain from using “harsh and divisive language.” He understood that if the bishops are going to participate in the public square, they need to do so without alienating those they seek to persuade.

A conference call is not the right place to settle differences. That can be done in other settings. This entire attack on Cardinal Dolan was unseemly.

If Joe Biden were a priest, he would have been removed from ministry pending a more thorough investigation. Instead, he is holed up in his basement talking to the media. Until May 1, no one from the media asked him one question about sexually assaulting Tara Reade.

On April 29, the Free Beacon reported that in 19 interviews he granted over a 5-week period, he fielded 142 questions, but not one was about Reade. In fact, when Biden was interviewed on April 28, even though he teed it up for reporters by discussing domestic violence and challenges that women face, none asked him about his accuser. That changed when Biden was questioned by Mika Brzezinski on the MSNBC show, “Morning Joe.”

At least five people have corroborated at least some parts of Reade’s account. She says Biden, then a senator, digitally penetrated her against her will in 1993. She says she reported the assault to three of his staffers. She also filed a Senate complaint. What happened? She was subject to reprisal. She said her assignments were downgraded, and she was moved to an isolated workstation. She was also told she had 12 months to find another job.

Biden denies the accusation. One way to find out who is telling the truth is to unearth the Biden documents that are sitting in the University of Delaware Library to see what Reade’s Senate complaint says (assuming it has not since miraculously disappeared). According to the Washington Post, there are 1,875 boxes, including 415 gigabytes of electronic records.

Biden told Brzezinski that if there were a complaint made by Reade, it would be in the National Archives, but that turned out not to be true—they don’t have such papers. But what about papers on his public career stored at the University of Delaware?

Brzezinski asked him why it would not be acceptable to simply do a search of Tara Reade’s name in the University of Delaware papers? He dodged the question on two occasions, refusing to give the okay. She also noted that the university papers were initially slated to be made public, but then that decision was reversed: it was decided to keep them under seal. Biden had no comment.

For decades, critics of the Catholic Church have said that it has gone too easy on accused priests. They want to see every piece of paper in an accused priest’s personnel file. Furthermore, they demand that the name of every accused priest be posted on the website of his diocese.

Joe Biden is not stepping down pending an investigation. Moreover, he refuses to ask the University of Delaware to release its secret files on him (they are being kept secret until he “retires from public life”), yet every journalist in the world insists that the Church should not be allowed to keep secret files on priests. And not only will Biden’s name not be posted on any website of the accused, no one will demand that it should be.

Is Biden guilty of sexual assault? We do not know. Is there a way to find out? Certainly. But not until he is treated with half the scrutiny afforded accused priests, and not until we see the secret files at the University of Delaware.

“More than 12,000 Catholic Churches in the U.S. Applied for PPP Loans—and 9,000 Got Them” (cbsnews.com)
“9,000 Catholic Churches Received PPP Loans Meant for Small Business” (drudgereport.com)
“Thousands of Catholic Churches Received PPP Loans: Report” (thehill.com)
“Almost Half of All Catholic Churches in the US Were Given Small Business Loans as Part of Coronavirus Emergency Funding” (thesun.com.uk)
“More than 12,000 Catholic churches in the US Applied for Federal Small Business Relief Loans” (dailymail.com.uk)

All of these media outlets evince an anti-Catholic bias. The first to do so was CBS; others followed. As often happens, the bias is in the headline, not the story.

Take the CBS News story. The first few paragraphs focus exclusively on Catholic churches which have received federal funds, but then it mentions that Protestant and Jewish houses of worship have received funding as well.

So why did CBS give the impression, in its headline, that Catholic churches were the only ones benefiting? And why did Drudge falsely suggest that Catholic churches managed to get money not targeted for them?

It’s not as though the biased media stories were unaware of the federal government explicitly stating that houses of worship were eligible for relief under the Small Business Administration guidelines—CBS actually published an excerpt from them.

It is common practice in the media for someone other than the reporter to write the headline. This needs to stop. It is what causes sensationalistic and often biased headlines. If the reporter writes the headline, it is more likely to accurately reflect the story. In addition, readers would know who is to blame when wildly inaccurate headlines are published.

On April 14, 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci was asked the following question on Snapchat’s “Good Luck America.” “If you’re swiping on a dating app like Tinder, or Bumble or Grindr, and you match with someone that you think is hot, and you’re just kind of like, ‘Maybe it’s fine if this one stranger comes over.’ What do you say to that person?”

Here is Fauci’s response. “If you’re willing to take the risk—and you know, everybody has their own tolerance for risks—you could figure out if you want to meet somebody.” He concluded, “If you want to go a little bit more intimate, well, then that’s your choice regarding risk.”

This is the same man who made a name for himself seeking to combat AIDS, so he should have learned something about the consequences of anonymous sex. Just as important, he is the same man who tells us not to shake hands with people, and to stay six feet away from each other. Unless, it now appears, we are having sex with someone we met online.

This raises serious questions about Fauci’s judgment skills.

“There are two things which kill the soul,” wrote St. Augustine, “despair and presumption.” Despair takes command when hope is jettisoned, when we give up on God. Presumption is more typically a characteristic of atheism, the conviction that we have no need of God, and are quite capable of going it alone.

The faithful do not despair. Secularists do. The faithful are also at home when they look to God for comfort. Secularists have no idea what this means.

It is for reasons like these that many studies have shown that those who believe in God are more likely to be optimistic than secularists. And in the case of secularists who are activists, typically in left-wing circles, pessimism is something they wallow in, always looking at the dark side.

Interestingly, those on the left who are not secularists have much in common with non-believers during this time. For example, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams upset some people when he opined that “God doesn’t put you where you’re going to be comfortable. God puts you where you need to be.” He added, “God always has a plan.” For this he not only incurred the wrath of secularists, he ticked off left-wing Christians, including a Jesuit priest.

The Nation, a Stalinist magazine, lashed out at Ben Carson, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, for noting that during this time of trial, it is important to develop “your God-given talents to the utmost.” This innocuous remark was branded as an example of “religious nationalism.”

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, an ex-altar boy, told us that the coronavirus numbers were getting better. He made sure God got none of the credit. “The number is down because we brought the number down. God did not do that. Faith did not do that.” Yes, he is just that self-righteous.

The secular left is happy about one element of the coronavirus pandemic: it allows them to exploit this tragedy for political purposes.

Slate ran an article describing how hard life is at this time in Riker’s Island, the New York prison for serial murderers and rapists. The title of the piece is, “Everyone’s Coughing, Everyone’s Agitated.” No doubt that is true. It is also true that those in nursing homes are lucky if they can cough, though that is not a community of any interest to the left.

“Advocates Worry As ICE Says Only Around 300 of its 32,000 Detainees Have Been Tested for COVID-19.” Daily Kos gave us this gem. The advocates, of course, want to abolish ICE, and the “detainees” are those who crashed our borders illegally.

The Nation took up the cause of “sex workers,” a.k.a. prostitutes, saying they “are among those most affected by the social distancing and lockdown policies.” These poor victims, we learn, are “consistently and unfairly stereotyped as diseased, so even mild epidemics can hurt business.” Trump should declare this a national emergency.

“Amazon Tribes Say Christian Missionaries Threaten ‘Genocide’ During Pandemic.” This Huffington Post beauty blames those intrusive Christians for bringing their lousy diseases with them, threatening to wipe out “isolated peoples.”

Daily Kos beat them all with this post: “Trump Faces Credible Accusations of Knowingly Spreading Coronavirus to the Maya of Guatemala.” Why he hasn’t been placed under house arrest is a mystery. The least he can do is authorize reparations for the Maya.

Finally, we have Richard Wigmans of Texas Tech University. He wants coronavirus to kill Trump. “I am personally an atheist,” the physics professor says, “but if #45 would die as a result of this virus, I might reconsider.”

Wigmans no doubt speaks for many of his ilk. This is what it takes to bring about optimism among these miserably unhappy people. A sicker bunch cannot be found, anywhere on earth.

Those who truly care about the poor, such as Mother Teresa, have always had some skin in the game. In her case, it was more than a little: she gave her life to the dispossessed. She risked her own well-being caring for lepers; she carried the sick up flights of stairs; she founded hospitals; and she tended to the dying. By contrast, left-wing champions of the poor never lift a finger. They simply agitate.

It’s worse than this. The average American has no idea just how left-wing radicals operate. Their goal is not to help the poor: it is to destroy our market economy in the name of championing their cause. The economy they seek to plunder is the same system that has made the lifestyle of the poor in the United States the envy of middle class peoples—never mind the poor—throughout much of the world. For left-wing activists, coronavirus is a gift: they can exploit it to promote socialism.

No sooner had coronavirus been seen as a crisis when a left-wing website introduced, “A Socialist Program to Fight COVID-19 and the Economic Crisis.” It called for (a) doubling the wages of essential workers and quadrupling their ranks with new hires (b) socialized health care (c) price controls (d) a moratorium on utilities, rent, mortgage payments, and evictions (e) an end to the two party system (f) a complete write-off of all debts incurred by working people, and (g) a national minimum wage of $1,000 per week.

If anyone thinks that this is just the meanderings of economic illiterates, consider what the “Squad” congressional members had to say.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib announced that “corporate greed is the disease in our country alongside what is happening with coronavirus.” She saw something to exploit. “This is our moment” she said, echoing Rahm Emanuel’s famous quip, “you never want a serious crisis to go to waste.”

With fewer drivers on the road, the declining demand for gas has rocked the stock market; the price of oil has plummeted. This brought a smile to the face of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who tweeted, “You absolutely love to see it.”

Rep. Ilhan Omar introduced a bill to cancel rent and mortgage payments during the pandemic. What about payments already made? They will be reimbursed, she said.
The “Squad” is on the hunt, looking to take advantage of this crisis by driving the economy to collapse. Why would they want to do that? To force the country to adopt socialism. This is not a novel idea.

In 1966, two Columbia University professors wrote an article for the Nation, a far-left magazine, imploring social workers and administrators to find every person in New York City who might even remotely qualify for welfare and sign him up immediately. Their goal—they were quite explicit about it—was to force the city to go bankrupt. That way the federal government would have no other choice but to step in and institute socialism.

The strategy worked, at least in part. Welfare rolls spiked, and New York City almost went bankrupt, but socialism never materialized. It did succeed, perversely, in devastating the poor.

The mayor, John Lindsay, accepted the reforms as outlined by the professors: every person who applied for welfare was put on the rolls, and none was required to provide evidence of his economic status.

Predictably, welfare recipients rose from 531,000 to 1,165,000 in a few years. This happened at a time when poverty was declining and unemployment was low. The truth is that welfare rolls expanded not because of economic conditions—they ballooned for purely political reasons.

David Horowitz was a radical activist during this period (fortunately, he has been on our side for decades), and he recalls how the left approaches crisis situations: “the worse the better.” In other words, make conditions worse, forcing revolutionary changes.

That is what the left is doing now—they want to make matters worse so they can force socialism down our throats. They are the polar opposite of Mother Teresa. They are not only a threat to working Americans, they are an absolute menace to the poor.

A new Gallup poll shows that coronavirus has led more Americans to deepen their faith. But judging from what happened on one weekend in May, it is evident that the pandemic has done nothing to stop hate speech directed at Catholics.

Bill Maher, an inveterate anti-Catholic, invited Dan Savage, a homosexual activist known for his vulgarities, to be on his show, and the guest made a comment so obscene about priests that we cannot reprint it here.

“Family Guy” depicted cartoon characters at the Last Supper. The exchange between the Jesus character and one of the apostles was so offensive that, again, we’d rather not reprint it.

In both cases we provided email contacts for the shows so our side could join the protest. These are deranged men, and their corporate sponsors are just as sick.

We will have to wait until November before the English version of a biography of Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI is available, but the book by Peter Seewald is already generating controversy. Benedict says his writings have been misrepresented beyond recognition, so much so that it has devolved into a “malignant distortion of reality.” Worse, attempts to silence him have been ongoing.

Sexuality and the life issues are what angers his most vociferous critics. That’s because they touch on the most sacred ground coveted by secularists. “One hundred years ago,” Benedict says, “everybody would have considered it to be absurd to speak of a homosexual marriage.” The same goes for “abortion and to the creation of human beings in the laboratory.”

What is most distressing are the attempts to silence Benedict. His critics want him to stay in a retirement home and watch TV. But he won’t cooperate. Those who do not accept gay marriage, he notes, must be prepared to suffer the consequences. “Today one is being excommunicated by society if one opposes it.”

“Modern society is in the middle of formulating an anti-Christian creed,” Benedict says, “and if one opposes it, one is being punished by society with excommunication.” This should be quite a book.

A new survey by the Public Religion Research Institute on LGBT people raises some important moral and political questions, though that is not the intent of the poll.

According to the survey, “5% of Americans identify as LGBT, including 2% who identify as gay or lesbian, 3% who identify as bisexual, and less than 1% who identify as transgender.” A demographic profile of these people yields striking results.

“Among Americans who identify as LGBT, nearly half (47%) are young adults (ages 18-29), about one-third (32%) are ages 30-49, about one in ten (12%) are ages 50-64, and 8% are seniors (ages 65 and older).”

On the basis of race and ethnicity, Native Americans are the only “people of color” who are not slightly overrepresented.

In terms of religious affiliation, people of faith are underrepresented. Almost half (47%) of the unaffiliated identify as LGBT. Geographically, the West is the most overrepresented and the South is the least represented. In terms of party affiliation, LGBT people are much more likely to be independents or Democrats than Republicans.

What these findings suggest is that to a large extent the LGBT community is a cultural phenomenon, not a biological one. How else to explain the disparities?

Take age. Why is there an inverse relationship between age and transgender identity, meaning the older the person the less likely he is to be transgender? To put it differently, why are those who identify as transgender mostly young people?

Young people have been indoctrinated into thinking that being a member of the LGBT community is at least a value-neutral attribute, and may even be cool. As Pope Francis has said, there is a “nasty” tendency in schools to “indoctrinate” children, teaching that our sex can be chosen and changed. This is doing a disservice to young people and it shows up in high rates of depression and suicide in this segment of the population.

Further proof that much of what is driving the increase in the LGBT community is cultural can be found by analyzing the response of Native Americans. Why are they not overrepresented the way other non-whites are? The answer seems plain: they are the least affected by the dominant culture. It is the dominant culture, as shaped by the schools, the media, and the entertainment industry that is driving the LGBT agenda, enticing adolescents to “experiment.”

Those who have no religious affiliation are of course more susceptible to LGBT propaganda: they are the most deracinated segment of the population. It is not devout Christian young people who are at war with human nature—it is secular-minded kids who reject the idea of nature and nature’s God.

Rootlessness explains why the West has the highest proportion of LGBT people and the South has the least. Southerners are more anchored in tradition and religion than any other part of the country, while those on the west coast are the most likely to see tradition and religion as constraining, thus leaving them more susceptible to experimentation.

As to be expected, Democrats, most of whom are liberals, are more likely to be a part of the LGBT community than Republicans, most of whom are conservatives, proving once again the role of cultural values.

Being an LGBT person is difficult enough (e.g., they suffer from high rates of depression and suicide), and this is especially true of the sexually confused (a male who thinks he is female and vice versa). That is why attempts to culturally mass produce them are pernicious.

Rapper Kanye West announced last October that he is a convert to Christianity. His album, “Jesus Is King,” made it to the top of the charts and he is currently working on a follow-up. In May, he made the cover of GQ magazine; he sat for a four-part interview with the magazine’s editor-in-chief, Will Welch.

West startled Welch, and will no doubt startle many readers. His penchant for busting stereotypes is on full display, hitting on race, religion, Hollywood, the media, and politics. Indeed, he has become quite the iconoclast.

Christians had every right to be skeptical of West when he said he had turned the corner and discovered Jesus. After all, this is a man who lived on the wild side. He was also disrespectful. In 2006 he appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone wearing a crown of thorns with “blood” streaming down his face; we criticized him for this stunt.

In 2013, we criticized him again when he kicked off his “Yeezus” tour in Seattle. “His performance also included a Virgin Mary, incense, a crucifix, etc. all trotted out to make a Catholic statement. That it was not exactly reverential is obvious.”

Now, however, there is reason to believe that West has turned the corner. He came across reflective and sincere in the GQ interview.

“I definitely think there’s an alter ego. And definitely Christ altered my ego (original italic).” He says he has given his life to Christ, crediting Jesus as his “anchor.” “I’m definitely born again.” He recognizes that there are those who have done things “with the word of Christ that were bad,” but, he hastens to add, “That’s not going to stop my love for Christ. I’m going to keep on expressing what God has done for my life.”

Jesus, West says, has been a source of “healing,” noting that his succumbing to alcohol—he wound up drinking Grey Goose in the morning—was the work of the devil. He began rebounding the day he said, “Devil, you’re not going to beat me today.” He hasn’t had a drink since.

West has a keen understanding of the importance of religion. Perhaps reflecting on the Hollywood milieu, he said, “when you’re not in service to God, you can end up being in service to everything else.” That is certainly true of many in the entertainment world. Tinseltown is known for alcoholism, drugs, promiscuity, and high rates of depression and suicide.

West takes umbrage at those who claim Christianity is “judgmental.” “They think that all of a sudden you believe in Christ, so we’re not even supposed to speak up. And if we speak up, people will say, ‘Oh, you’re being judgmental.'”

His interviewer is clearly in the secular camp. For example, Welch opines that he sees religious institutions as “systems of control,” and asks his subject to respond. West floored him. “You know, I see opportunity for creativity inside our faith.”

To a secularist, this is unintelligible, but to the faithful it makes perfect sense. Truly creative people are always disciplined, otherwise what they produce is random and hollow. Christianity may be restrictive, but it is a healthy tonic. It is not restraint that levels people—it is the abandonment of it.

West, ever countercultural, says the penchant for control in society is extant, but its source is not Christianity. “Black people are controlled by emotions through the media. The media puts musicians, artists, celebrities, actors in a position to be the face of the race….” West, who has warmed to Trump, also resents the kind of control that dictates how blacks should vote, saying, “I will not be told who I’m gonna vote on because of my color.”

Perhaps the most surprisingly astute observation West made—it is shared by many devout Catholics and evangelicals—is his comment on surrender. “Now all the energy and that creativity that I have channeled and put on track comes from me surrendering to God and saying that everything is in God’s will.” That is the voice of a mature Christian.

As Catholics, we prize forgiveness and redemption. It is never a good thing to give up on someone, and this is especially true when the person trying to pivot is reaching out to us. If that person fails to turn his life around, we have lost nothing. But if he succeeds, we can all be grateful.

Those cultural elites who once embraced West are uneasy with his conversion odyssey. Some seem to have liked him better when he was offending people. That made him hip. But now that he appears to be serious about his faith in Jesus, all bets are off. The secular kings and queens who comprise the entertainment industry prefer raunch to the sacred.

Kanye West is his own man. He is also a man at home with the Creator. He should be welcomed, not disparaged, for going against the grain of the dominant culture. Given his huge following among young people, maybe he can he help to transform it. We could certainly use his help.